Brilliant, Ineffective Obesity Prevention Policies

“Taxes on sweetened beverages have become a litmus test in public health: if you are concerned about rapidly increasing global rates of obesity, you should favor them.” This truth telling comes from a new commentary in JAMA Pediatrics. So we are happy to acknowledge the radiant sincerity of those who believe in taxing soda. But we must also note that however cherished this strategy may be, it should probably go to the list of policies that are largely ineffective for obesity prevention.

A new study of the Philadelphia sweetened beverage tax appears this week in JAMA Pediatrics and prompted the commentary quoted above. The authors of this new study concluded:

“These results show that 2 years after implementation, the Philadelphia beverage tax was not associated with changes in youth zBMI or obesity prevalence. Though certain subgroups demonstrated small statistically significant changes in zBMI, they are of low clinical significance.”

Modest or Nil Effects

This latest study is consistent with most of the studies to date on the effects of taxing sweetened beverages. To no one’s surprise, the consumption of these beverages goes down when taxes drive prices higher. But lower obesity rates do not result.

Researchers recently studied the effect of a beverage tax in Berkeley California and found “no significant overall difference in the percentage of youth with overweight or obesity or youth with obesity compared with control cities.” Despite this negative finding, they kept digging and, through a difference-in-difference analysis, found an association of the tax with “lower BMI percentile among youth.”

More compelling to us is the fact that consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has been declining now for more than two decades. But all the while, obesity prevalence among youth has continued to rise.

However brilliant the idea of taxing sweetened beverages may be, it appears to be ineffective for obesity prevention.

Click here for the new study and here for the commentary on it. For further reporting, click here, here, and here.

A Lesson in the Futility of Chaining Up One Removable Part, photograph by Billie Grace Ward, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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November 29, 2024